This did away with the last bit of resistance. The remainder of the army was only too glad to surrender, and messengers were sent off to tell Numa the good news and bring him home in triumph to his own place. When they had welcomed him, they would come to the hill beside the river and found their own city.
It was a day long to be remembered when the Romans returned, the young men marching lightly with laughter and singing, their young leaders in the van. The people went out to meet them with music and rejoicing, and there was a great feast in the colony. But to Colonus the most precious moment of that day—not even excepting the first sight of his own son Marcus—was that in which the young and victorious Romulus came to him where he stood with Tullius the priest, and knelt before them, saying,
“Tell me that I have done well, my fathers, for without your approval the rest is nothing. Have I proved myself worthy to found our city, O ye who know the law?”
[Illustration: Then they blessed him and crowned him with the victor’s crown of laurel]
Then they blessed him and crowned him with the victor’s crown of laurel. The outlaw had found his own people.
In the weeks that followed the slaying of Amulius, Romulus sat many hours each day with the older men, consulting and planning. He was very quick to understand all that he heard and saw, and very anxious not to leave out the least ceremony proper to the founding of the city. Each one of these ceremonies had a meaning. The founder of the city was to the community what the father of a family was to his household; he was a sort of high priest. It was a strange experience for the wild young chief of a band of men of no family,—outlaws and almost banditti. From a forest lair with no temple and no altar he had come to a town where the altar was the heart of everything. From expeditions planned and directed by himself, in which his will was the only law, he was now to be the head of a life in which everything was guided, more or less, by customs so old that no one could say where they came from. He was no man’s servant or subject, but he was the chosen man of the gods, to do their will in the city.
The fathers of the city saw more and more clearly the difference between the two brothers. Remus did not, apparently, take any interest in the traditions and the ceremonies so strange to him and so familiar to the colonists. Romulus had been leader in all their expeditions, not because he tried to make himself first and crowd his brother down into second place, but because his men would follow him anywhere, and they did not seem to have the same faith in Remus. Moreover, Remus did not seem to care to be a leader. He never sat, silent, planning and working out a way to do what seemed impossible, as Romulus did. Romulus was not a great talker unless at some especial time when he had something it was necessary to say. He was in the habit of thinking a matter over very thoroughly before he said anything at all about it. People wondered at his lightning-like decisions in an emergency, but the men who knew him best knew that he had often come to them privately beforehand, and talked the whole thing over, without their knowing what he was after until the time came.